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The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates is famously credited for cautioning that doctors must “first, do no harm” – a dictum that is drummed into the heads of medical students everywhere. The admonition is useful to healthcare professionals when considering interventions … Continue reading →

Talking with Dr. James Fletcher, former Minister of Sustainable Development of Saint Lucia, about the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. How does the American withdrawal affect the fight against climate change, and where does it leave Small Island Developing States? Whill companies, municipalities, and US states pick up the slack for President Trump, and if so, has he won his first negotiation? What should Caribbean countries do now that America has scuttled the Paris Accord?

Talking with Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, about the political crisis in Venezuela. Is the diplomatic battle over the fate of the Bolivarian Revolution a clash of competing principles, or an age-old hegimonic struggle, lubricated by oil? What is the Caribbean Community’s role in defending principle and fostering dialogue? What’s at stake for the Caribbean generally, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in particular, if the crisis escalates?

The Long, Tortured History of Absentee Parliamentarians One hundred and ninety-five years ago, in the venerable House of Lords, the Earl of Shaftesbury “laid on the table the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the precedents relative to … Continue reading →

Eight questions in the quest for eight seats Disclaimer: I’m about to accuse Arnhim Eustace and his closest followers of not having a single shred of evidence of election fraud or election error sufficient to call into question the results … Continue reading →

One hundred years ago this month, the Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, global icon and national hero of Jamaica, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA, in its heyday, was the era’s most dynamic and visionary mass movement of Black people organised under the banner of Pan-Africanism – of Africa for Africans; of the need for global black businesses; of resistance to Western hegemony; of the right of repatriation of African peoples; and of the universality and unity of African struggles from the United States to the United Kingdom to Latin America to the Caribbean to the Motherland.

The UNIA was also a working class movement of “ordinary” people. The Baltimore Observer newspaper at the time described them as “cooks, porters, hodcarriers, and washwomen,” and tried to deride the Association by mockingly suggesting that Garvey should have on the official seal of the empire “a washtub, a frying pan, a bailhook and a mop.” But it was the working class, people-centred nature of the UNIA (and the Nation of Islam, led by former UNIA member Elijah Muhammad) that was its greatest strength. Pan-African ideology was not simply an academic pursuit for writers, or for scholars without followers. It was a popular movement, with a broad base of support among disenfranchised peoples. That support was what made the UNIA, and Garvey, dangerous.

For Black people, the world of 1914 was vastly different than the one we inhabit today. In 1914, every African country except Ethiopia was the colony of a European power, as was almost every Caribbean country (sans Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Within the United States, racial segregation was the law of the land, upheld 20 years earlier by the landmark US Supreme Court case of Plessy v Furgeson. The legal dismantling of segregation and the passage of the Civil Rights Act were still 40 and 50 years away, respectively. These bleak conditions informed the goals and worldview of the UNIA.

Today, many of the more immediate and tangible goals of the UNIA have been achieved, from desegregation to decolonization. But the guiding Pan-Africanist perspective of Garvey’s Association, and his desire for Black people to centre themselves physically or philosophically within the African continuum, remains a distant, and seemingly unreachable goal.

Is Pan Africanism also dead? Or has the unifying dream of the UNIA simply outlived its usefulness, 100 years later?

Post-Garvey, Pan-Africanism as a goal and ideal retreated first to the well-stuffed armchairs of bourgeois intellectuals and then to the rarefied air of political leaders who were tired of a geopolitical world order that was irrevocably stacked against the interests of African peoples. Worse, it also became the last refuge of despotic leaders who used Pan-Africanist rhetoric as a political prophylactic against regional criticism. But the people – the working class “cooks, porters, hodcarriers, and washwomen” who populated and energised the UNIA and invested their money in the Black Star Line – followed a different path. They voted with their wallets, their cultural choices and their visa application fees. Pan-African no longer, we became Pan-Brookynites, Pan-Canadian, and Pan-British. Our spending choices spurred the creation of multinational corporations and global brands. Capitalism, consumerism, individualism and a homogenisation of culture and desire – all lubricated by insidiously omnipresent Western media – was the opiate of Pan-Africanism. The rise of this Westernised ethos of me-first individualism is the antithesis of community-centred or global movements.

But for the annual exercises in rhetorical excess at the summits of the African Union in Addis Ababa, “Pan-Africanist” is a term more frequently used today in eulogies of great men; an epitaph on the tombstones countless Don Quixotes who tilted tirelessly at geopolitical windmills.

The non-African and/or Western-assimilated intelligentsia, long opposed to the revolutionary thesis of Pan-Africanism, has crowed triumphantly that the philosophy is dead. The inglorious murder of Muammar al-Gaddafi, chief funder of the African Union and proponent of a “United States of Africa” triggered giddy joy in America’s establishment press. G. Pascal Zachary, a sometimes-astute non-African technology journalist turned Africa expert, proclaimed in The Atlantic that “Qaddafi’s death. . . is a reminder that pan-Africanism was an historic mistake of enormous proportions.”

“Be it known to all men that whereas, all men are created equal and entitled to the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and because of this we, the duly elected representatives of the Negro peoples of the world, invoking the aid of the just and Almighty God do declare all men, women and children of our blood throughout the world free citizens, and do claim them as free citizens of Africa, the Motherland of all Negroes.”

“We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics; we also demand Africa for the Africans at home and abroad.”

Here, in two succinct paragraphs, are bedrock principles of the UNIA’s Pan-Africanism. Freedom and liberation for African peoples and nations; African unity (because you can’t be the a “citizen[] of Africa” unless there is a country called Africa, rather than a collection of sovereign states); and full and equal involvement of the African Diaspora. In claiming Africa as “the Motherland of all Negroes,” the UNIA unequivocally and unapologetically located people of African descent within “the Motherland.” Today, that profound act might not seem as big a deal as it was then, when Africa and everything African was seen as backward and shameful.

On second thought, it is still a huge deal. Africa isn’t commonly portrayed as the “dark continent” of savages and cannibals as it was in 1914 (one of the UNIA’s declarations back then was “We hereby protest against the publication of scandalous and inflammatory articles by an alien press tending to create racial strife and the exhibition of picture films showing the Negro as a cannibal.” – Can you imagine the need to even say something like that??). Nonetheless, the Africa of today is still portrayed solely as a continent of war, poverty, disease and corruption despite the countless examples of the Continent’s accomplishments, modernity, history, innovation, culture and wealth. People of African descent – particularly those of us in the West – are still reluctant to fully embrace the concept of Africa as our ancestral home. The result is our own rootlessness, and our failure to rise up in solidarity when our Motherland is wronged, exploited or neglected by the countries in which we now reside. The rootlessness caused by our failure to embrace the Motherland affects us personally and disadvantages the Continent on the whole.

The United States, the world’s most powerful nation, is home to over 40 million Black people, and has a President whose father was born in Africa. Brazil, one of the world’s rising powers, has close to 100 million people who identify themselves as Black or mixed race – a majority of their population. Peoples of African descent form the majority of most Caribbean nations. The UNIA imagined a world in which these massive and influential populations of Black people would locate themselves in an African continuum – mentally, psychologically, personally and globally. In doing so, they would create a nation of diverse and far-flung peoples whose population, wealth, influence, and power would rival that of any in the world.

“Africa for the Africans at home and abroad” was simultaneously a liberation cry against the colonialism of the day and a forward-looking call for Black people to take interest and ownership in the future of their Motherland. Imagine a continent of 1.1 billion people, with a GDP of $2.4 trillion dollars and a history as old as time itself. Now imagine another 200 million people, even wealthier, on average, than those on the Continent, all forging ties of culture, commerce and common objectives. To imagine that powerful collective, strengthened by its diverse outlooks and experiences, united by ancestry and history, and fortified by a shared goal of development, is to imagine the UNIA’s Pan-African philosophy.

“We strongly condemn the cupidity of those nations of the world who, by open aggression or secret schemes, have seized the territories and inexhaustible natural wealth of Africa, and we place on record our most solemn determination to reclaim the treasures and possession of the vast continent of our forefathers.”

Here is the danger of neglecting the Pan-African cry of “Africa for the Africans:” Without that sense of interest, ownership and united defence of the Continent, the dictates of capitalism and great power intrigue will forever consign Africa to be merely a source of resources for the betterment of other nations. The Continent has supplied other empires with labour and natural resources – and ridiculously unfair terms – for the last 500 years. The names of the exploitative powers have changed, as well as the means of exploitation, but the seizure of the “inexhaustible natural wealth of Africa” continues apace. Just read the news, where the debate about where “investment” ends and “colonialism” begins continues to rage. This prescient foundation principle of the UNIA’s Pan-Africanism is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. There is no need for me to explain any further the dangerous consequences of allowing other nations and powers to carve up and exploit the Continent’s resources for their benefit instead of Africans’ benefit. Who feels it knows it.

“We demand the right of unlimited and unprejudiced education for ourselves and our posterity forever.”

“We demand that instructions given Negro children in schools include the subject of ‘Negro History’, to their benefit.”

Education – unlimited, unprejudiced, and rooted in history and a positive self-image – was a UNIA Pan-African rallying cry. Over the next 100 years, experts have only reinforced the value of education for development and progress, and the importance of young people developing a sense of themselves that is affirming and empowering.

To ask whether Pan-Africanism is relevant today is to ignore the existing global racial disparities in education, or to endorse those disparities as acceptable. Every study ever conducted makes powerful connections between education and wages, choices and empowerment. You want to empower a people? Educate them. You want to reduce poverty and eliminate a sense of helpless victimhood? Educate the poor and the exploited. The UNIA recognised and championed this visionary cause.

All the new age talk about self esteem being connected to body image, or gender roles, or poverty, or sexuality, pales in comparison to the fundamental disability that children must carry into their adulthood if they believe that they are racially inferior. Not too long ago, Caribbean history was the history of the great European explorers and colonizers – whose individual names we learned – and their exploits relative to a nameless, faceless mass of “slaves” or “natives.” I certainly learned the names of more British and Spanish kings and queens than I did African ones. I was told about the “peaceful” Arawaks and the “warlike, cannibal” Caribs. I learned of the “‘slaves’ taken from Africa” as if the entire Continent was simply an endless source of a different species of human – called ‘slave’ – from whom we all descended: The “bottomless pit” of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

“We demand a free and unfettered commercial intercourse with all the Negro people of the world.”

And here is the linchpin of Pan-Africanism in today’s globalized, commercialized, hyper-capitalist world: “free and unfettered commercial intercourse” across Africa and between peoples of African descent. Black Business.

100 years ago, the UNIA was calling for a free trade zone among African nations and its Diaspora. Today, we have a European single market and customs union that has revolutionized trade and commerce in that continent (Pan-Europa?). There is an ASEAN Free Trade Area that covers the 600 million people and $2.3 trillion in GDP of ten Asian countries (Pan-Asia?). The North American Free Trade Area covers the almost 500 million peoples of Canada, Mexico and the United States (Pan-America?). The imperative for free trade areas based on geography or history is more urgent today than it was in Garvey’s time, and the examples of Europe and Asia prove its validity in the African context. To paraphrase the UNIA – by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asians; there is similar demand of African free trade for the Africans.

Today, the establishment of free trade areas and the facilitation of “commercial intercourse” is the bedrock of any integration movement or the creation of a “Pan-“ sense of unity. The reason that Africans in the continent and in the Caribbean often feel a greater sense of kinship or affinity for great Western powers is partially rooted in the pervasive influence and omnipresence of Western commercial brands – from McDonalds and KFCs to iPhones to BMWs. Their ubiquitous presence in our regions, and the way that our aspirations are shaped by them, is rooted in the liberal trading ties we have between our region and our former colonizers or neo-colonizers. And let’s not talk about media: If I ask you to name your favourite TV stations, TV shows, news programmes, movies or magazines; how many will you list before you hit upon an African one? The presence of Western goods and services in our regions – to the exclusion of African ones – is a cause and a symptom of our multifaceted disconnect from the Motherland.

Our trading ties are still patterned on the now-illogical trade routes established by the colonizers and neo-colonialists. Our politicians debate how many Bananas we’ve shipped to England. We discuss how to take advantage of economic partnership agreements with Europe. We go shopping in, and ship barrels fromthe United States. We study how many tourists come from Europe or the USA.

Where is Africa in all this? For that matter, where are the African descendants in Central and South America? In an era of integration, where “Pan-Europeanism” has become a powerful reality despite Europe’s diversity, what is inherent in Africa and Africans that prohibits similar economic unity?

Maybe the UNIA was onto something.

The Caribbean in the Pan-African Renaissance

The Caribbean has produced a disproportionate number of great Pan-Africanist thinkers and leaders. Jamaican Garvey begat Malcolm X (Grenadian parents), Louis Farrakhan (Jamaican and Kittitian parents), Kwame Ture, George Padmore and C.L.R. James (Trinidadian), Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire (Martinique), and Walter Rodney (Guyana), to name only a few. Indeed, many Pan-Africanists are born out of a need to look beyond their borders and see themselves as part of something larger than their own limiting immediacy – be it the ghettos and shantytowns of the United States and Africa, or the smallness of a Caribbean island. Pan-Africanism in that sense stands as an ideological oasis in a desert of insular exceptionalism – a rock in an unending torrent of seemingly local problems without solutions. These conditions, and the desire to see beyond them, is at the core of the Caribbean’s leadership in Pan-African thought.

So too has the racial makeup and history of the Caribbean forced us to consider issues of Blackness and exploitation in more global and systemic terms than those for whom racism was a segregationist white man with a noose, a nightstick and a guard dog.

CARICOM’s recent call for reparations from European slave powers for native genocide and African slavery is rooted in the Pan-African agenda. It has electrified and revitalized the remnants of the Pan-African movement worldwide, and the symbiosis between the Reparations movement and the Pan-African agenda will likely be the vehicle that will add impetus and structure to any Pan-Africanist or reparatory successes of the 21st century.

As the first (and second) generations of great Pan-Africanists have died off, the Caribbean has a special responsibility to build on their legacy. Our creativity, intellect, leadership and solidarity have shaped and driven Pan-Africanism for the last 100 years. As a new generation of Caribbean youth look longingly to the north rather than the east, the future of Pan-Africanism for those “at home and abroad” is at a crossroads.

Should we give up on our historical and cultural links to Africa? Should we forget the atrocities that brought our ancestors to Caribbean shores, and the legacies that we still confront today? Should we pattern our education on British or American curricula – with a perfunctory nod of the head to Africa – and call that progress? Should we try to build trading relations solely with the USA and Europe, on unequal terms, or explore trade with the peoples of Africa, Central and South America? Should we see the world with African eyes, or through the media-filtered glasses of FOX News and its ilk?

The answers, I think, are clear.

Happy Anniversary, UNIA. Thank you Marcus Garvey. And long live Pan-Africanism. Rally ’round the flag.

One of the most sacred of sacred cows in the global fight against HIV and AIDS is the mantra that archaic laws prohibiting homosexual conduct must be repealed in order to make further progress in controlling the spread of the disease. The logic that underpins this mantra is devastatingly simple: men who have sex with men are at a higher-risk for contracting the virus. Societal stigma against gay men complicates their access to AIDS-education and outreach, not to mention antiretrovival drugs and medical attention. Laws that ban gay sex underpin this social stigma and discrimination. Therefore, repealing these laws will result in real reductions in the number of new HIV infections and deaths among those already infected.

In recent months, there has been some newsworthy and unexpected pushback against this conventional wisdom from a number of Caribbean sources. First, Professor Brendan Bain, head and project manager of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training Network (CHART), who said in court documents that, in his professional opinion, decriminalising homosexual activity would not necessarily lead to a reduction in the rate of HIV infections. Professor Bain was swiftly removed as head of CHART amid global outrage, because his opinion was apparently incompatible with the organisation’s mandate to “provide access to quality HIV & AIDS prevention, care, and treatment and support services for all Caribbean people.” (note: I’m not very familiar with Prof. Bain’s scholarship, so I’m not commenting on his research or findings).

Second, CARICOM heads of state and government, meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, rejected a document emanating from their own Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV & AIDS (PANCAP), which purported to commit them to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS through not only repealing the offending laws, but also encouraging churches to eliminate faith-based discrimination against homosexuals.

Both Professor Bain and the CARICOM Heads are suggesting that the fight against HIV and AIDS and the fight for gay rights are separate and distinct battles, despite decades of international efforts to merge the two. The howls of indignation from regional and international LGBT communities – as well as international donors – are increasing in volume. PANCAP, whose excellent work is largely funded by foreign donors with an anti-discrimination agenda (their website lists “contributing donor partners” as the governments of Canada, the EU, Germany, the USA, the UK, along with the Clinton Foundation and the World Bank), is worrying where its next dollar is coming from. And an unlikely alliance of reactionaries, nationalists, Caribbean academics, bigots, homophobes, religious leaders and political opportunists have become emboldened by the words of Professor Bain and CARICOM heads – all seeing and hearing what they choose to see and hear in the recent controversies.

Some will say – perhaps with some justification – that the expressions of Professor Bain are simply the product of being influenced by virulently anti-homosexual Jamaican society, or that the position of the CARICOM leaders is a politically self-serving act of pandering to an anti-gay electorate. Others will point out that the Caribbean is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in HIV prevalence, and that most Caribbean countries outlaw gay sex. They will see a causal link between those two facts, and accuse anyone with a differing view of burying their heads in bigoted sands.

However, on this front, the CARICOM heads are actually right. It is not simply a legalistic point to say that the anti-AIDS and pro-gay fights are different things. It is a fundamental fact. And in the context of Caribbean societies, the fact is that dedicating scarce anti-AIDS resources to fight gay rights causes is not the most effective use of real or political capital – despite the very worthy arguments in favour of eliminating state discrimination against homosexuals.

So let’s look at how well or poorly the Caribbean, with its anti-sodomy laws, is doing in its fight against HIV/AIDS. Let us use as our source the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) document “Global Report: UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic 2013.” What it says about the Caribbean’s fight against AIDS may surprise you:

“since 2001, the annual number of new HIV infections among adults in sub-Saharan Africa has declined by 34%. The most pronounced decline in new infections since 2001 (49%) has occurred in the Caribbean.” – pg 12

“Across sub-Saharan Africa, diverse countries have achieved notable reductions in HIV prevalence among young people (15–24 years). In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV prevalence among young women and men fell by 42% from 2001 to 2012. Even with these favourable trends, HIV prevalence among young women remains more than twice as high as among young men throughout sub-Saharan Africa.Trends are mixed among other regions, with the Caribbean experiencing substantial declines but with no clear downward trend apparent in the Middle East or North Africa.” – pg 17

“In other regions, where HIV prevalence among sex workers is considerably lower, prevalence trends appear to be stable, although there are indications of a reduction in HIV prevalence since 2007 among sex workers in the Caribbean.” – pg 22

“In 2012, according to national GARPR reports, the highest median HIV prevalence among men who have sex with men was reported in Western and Central Africa (19%) and Eastern and Southern Africa (15%), with somewhat lower but still high levels of HIV infection reported among men who have sex with men in Latin America (12%), Asia and the Pacific (11%), Western and Central Europe and North America (8%) and the Caribbean (7%).” – pg 22

“Inadequate resources impede efforts to reach men who have sex with men with essential HIV prevention services. International funding vastly outweighs domestic spending on focused prevention services for men who have sex with men globally, including in all regions except the Caribbean.” – pg 26

“there is considerable variation in the coverage of prevention services for pregnant women living with HIV. Coverage is highest in Eastern and Central Europe and the Caribbean (more than 90%), while coverage is much lower in Asia and the Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 20%).” – pg 39

So, to summarise, according to UNAIDS, the Caribbean is doing better than most regions in (1) controlling new infections; (2) reducing prevalence among young people; (3) reducing prevalence among sex workers; and (4) providing medication to pregnant women with HIV. Even more remarkably, the Caribbean, with its anti-sodomy laws, is doing as well as, or better than most regions in the levels of HIV infection reported among men who have sex with men!

Dig a little deeper in the appendices of the UNAIDS report and you will see other interesting facts. For example, the Caribbean’s Estimated HIV Prevalence among adults has gone down from 1.3% in 2001 to 1.0% today. That prevalence rate is still one of the worst, besting only Sub-Saharan Africa’s 4.7%. However, it is interesting to see that the Bahamas’ 3.3% prevalence and Haiti’s 2.1% skew our regional average upwards. Why is this interesting? Because the Bahamas and Haiti do not have laws banning gay sex, yet their prevalence is among the highest in the region. Indeed, the Bahamas’ 3.3% prevalence is worse than that of 20 countries in Africa.

(Since I know you’re wondering, Boom-Bye-Bye Jamaica has a prevalence rate of 1.7%, down from 2.4% in 2001)

Now, I know that the naysayers will say that the Caribbean data is inaccurate, that anti-gay stigma reduces reportage among the MSM communities, or, worse, that government entities are intentionally misstating the scope of the problem. Me? I take this data as the UN reports and analyses it. Whatever grain of salt you want me to take with this Caribbean data, I don’t believe it to be any less accurate than the data for other regions of the developing world.

The unvarnished fact is this: in spite of the existence of laws that criminalise gay sex, the Caribbean doing better than ever in its fight against HIV and AIDS. And the Caribbean is currently making better progress than most regions in its ongoing battle.

Gay men aren’t the only stigmatized group at higher-than-average risk of contracting HIV. Sex workers (prostitutes) and intravenous drug users are also high-risk groups. Coincidentally, the Caribbean also has laws against prostitution and intravenous drug use. Yet very few donor countries or NGOs are claiming the decriminalizing of prostitution or drug use are necessary prerequisites to reducing HIV prevalence.

Yes, you can legitimately argue that criminalising gay sex is more central to a gay man’s identity than the “occupational” or “recreational” prohibitions against prostitution or drug use. But that’s a gay rights argument, not an epidemiological one. And it reinforces the separation between the anti-HIV and pro-gay battles.

The Laws Of Man. . .

There are legal and legalistic issues surrounding the existing structure of our laws governing sex in the Caribbean. Most of our laws do not specifically ban homosexuality or even homosexual sex. Rather, they outlaw sodomy and/or buggery – that means ALL anal or oral sex (hetero- or homosexual), plus bestiality. Do these laws, given their very limited enforcement, really deter any homosexual men from having sex? Do they deter any heterosexual couples from engaging in fellatio, cunnilingus, or anal sex? Is the repeal of these laws really a critical blow against stigma and discrimination, or are they an exercise in “checking the box” by NGOs preoccupied with formalistic legislative harmonisation (see also the fights against unenforced death penalty laws and abortion laws in the Caribbean).

Let us not pretend that the ancient anti-sodomy laws we inherited from the United Kingdom are the source or cause of the Caribbean’s homophobia. Repealing these laws will do next to nothing in changing the minds or mores of those who are virulently anti homosexual. Nor should we pretend that the Caribbean has static, unchanging views on homosexuality. Young people have different views than old people. People who watch “Modern Family” and “Will and Grace” on their imported US cable TVs may have different views from those who do not. Church goers and Dancehall music aficionados can discuss homosexuality in different terms than those with more secular interests. People have friends and family members who are “out” as gay or lesbian. The Caribbean view on homosexuality is more complex and nuanced than it was 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. Even though the laws against sodomy remain on the books.

Is it the law that will change the society, or the society that will change the law?

Those who lash out against laws that “criminalise private sexual conduct between consenting adults” need to recognise that most societies have such laws – laws against prostitution, or adult incest, for example, both disregard the issues of privacy and consent in pursuit of some perceived greater moral good. Should these victimless crimes also be taken off the books?

That said, our existing laws and constitution are actually fruitful ground for legal activism by gay right proponents. Our constitutional protections of privacy, due process and nondiscrimination can certainly be interpreted as placing what happens in the bedroom between homosexuals off limits to state intrusion. All that is needed are the right facts, the right lawyers and the right judge(s). As recently as 1986, the US Supreme Court said that nothing in their constitution prohibited anti-sodomy laws. By 2003, the same US Supreme Court, interpreting the same constitution, struck down those same laws. In the Caribbean, we all have “Recognition of Marriage” statutes, which say that if you’re married in a foreign jurisdiction (UK, USA, etc.) then that marriage is automatically recognised in our countries. What happens when married gay couples show up at our registry demanding official recognition of their union?

(I could go on, but I’ve generally stopped giving free legal advice).

Questions Worth Asking. . .

Whether or not the anti-sodomy laws should be repealed is a question worth asking (and answering). Whether private gay sex, public gay displays of affection, or gay marriage can or should be countenanced by Caribbean societies are issues that are increasingly difficult to duck. Whether gay rights are universal human rights or externally-imposed Western European values that infringe on Caribbean sovereignty is open for debate. Whether there is something special about Caribbean morals that exempt the region from the global movement towards increasing acceptance of homosexuality requires careful consideration.

But. But…

These are debatable, divisive, contentious issues in the Caribbean. The fight against HIV/AIDS is not. The overwhelming majority of Caribbean citizens want greater HIV/AIDS education and access to quality care for all who need it. We want people to get tested. We want cheap, readily-available antiretroviral drugs. We want cheap, available condoms. We want trained, empowered medical personnel. We want effective treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. We want to arrest and eliminate the spread of HIV in the Caribbean, and we want to ensure that people with HIV live long, productive, lives, free of stigma and discrimination based on their illness.

Conflating these unanimous goals with the acrimonious controversies surrounding the gay rights agenda can only serve to weaken our shared resolve to win the war against HIV/AIDS. Reasonable minds can differ about whether it is “worth it” to use the anti-AIDS movement as a vehicle to advance gay rights. But reasonable minds really shouldn’t pretend that the two issues are one and the same.

America’s Grand Hustle

Picture, if you will, a crop – let’s say tomatoes – being grown on farms and sold to consumers worldwide. Now imagine if one country – let’s say the United States – declared that (1) the importation of tomatoes into the USA was illegal; (2) it would take political and economic measures against any country that grew tomatoes; (3) it would fund the eradication of tomatoes in other countries, and use military hardware to destroy tomatoes or interdict tomato shippers; and (4) any foreigner convicted of growing, selling, eating or otherwise possessing tomatoes would be forever denied entry into the USA.

Imagine also, that while the USA erected this impenetrable wall to foreign tomato imports, the growth and consumption of American-grown tomatoes was actually legal within American borders, and that individual US states were making millions of dollars from the sale of American tomatoes. Picture successive American presidents admitting to eating tomatoes, and talented American scientists working assiduously to improve tomato yield and sweetness, even while American helicopters were spraying and destroying tomato crops in competing markets.

Well, in this hypothetical world of legal and military barriers to the international trade in tomatoes, the World Trade Organisation would be up in arms. It would be a violation of every principle of free trade, and a particularly egregious violation, at that. To actually ban goods as illegal outside of your borders, but make those same goods legal and tradeable within, would be the most nakedly aggressive form of protectionism ever conceived in the history of global trade.

But if you simply change the name of our imaginary crop from tomatoes to marijuana, what emerges are the contours of America’s Grand Ganja Hustle – one which will position the USA as the leading and dominant producer of marijuana for years to come.

How big is marijuana in the United States today? The answer to that question is mind-boggling.

An estimated 102 million Americans – one third of the population – have smoked marijuana at least once in their life. In 2012, California was estimated to have 70,000 – 75,000 acres of marijuana under legal and illicit cultivation. California was also estimated to be home to 75% of America’s domestic ganja cultivation, at the time. That means that in 2012, the USA had roughly 100,000 acres of Ganja being farmed outdoors, to say nothing of the massive indoor marijuana cultivators that produce special blends and carefully controlled ganja strains.

To put that 100,000 acres of American weed in perspective, bear in mind that the entire acreage of Saint Vincent AND all of the Grenadines is roughly 96,000. In other words, if every square inch of SVG was one big marijuana farm, it still wouldn’t match the amount of weed grown in the USA today. Interestingly, of the three “drug crops” – marijuana, opium and coca – marijuana is the only one grown within the USA. That makes it a little more difficult to blame Colombians and Afghans for your drug problem. It also makes legalization of Ganja a little easier and more profitable to American politicians.

In fact, despite the hypocritical hand-wringing about Vincentian marijuana production, the United States is currently growing roughly 250 times more weed on outdoor farms than we are here in SVG. With the rapid expansion of access to legal Ganja in the USA, that disparity is likely to increase dramatically.

Let us also examine the quality of the American product. The chemical in marijuana that makes you high is called THC (short for Tetrahydrocannabinol). In the trippy, hippy days of the 1960s, when America enjoyed its first national flirtation with marijuana, the average THC content of Yankee weed was less than 1%. By the 1990s, American weed had THC of under 5%, making it far inferior to Caribbean offerings. Today, the average THC of American marijuana exceeds 10%, and many specialty strains can reach 25 – 40% THC, inducing highs typically achieved with “hard” drugs like cocaine and heroin. The THC content in Caribbean and South American Ganja – while increasing – is not growing at nearly the same rate as Yankee weed, where chemists, botanists and tinkerers are contributing to a vibrant and uninhibited research community. While Jamaica has done a fair amount of pioneering and important research on the medicinal properties of marijuana, the United States has cornered the scientific market on improving the yield, variety and potency of Ganja through innovative farming and production techniques.

[Medicinal Ganja alert: THC is proven to increase appetite, decrease nausea, decrease pain perception, and decrease pressure inside the eye (useful in glaucoma treatment). Another, less-hyped compound in Ganja is called cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD doesn’t make you high, so it is less sexy to Ganja marketers. However, CBD is purported to contain antimicrobial, antioxidant, neuroprotective and anti-epileptic properties, as well as the ability to slow the metastasizing of certain types of cancers].

In true capitalist fashion, the amount of weed grown in the USA – and its potency – has rapidly increased in response to the overwhelming local demand for the product. Today, American law is catching up with the economics of supply and demand. Twenty of the USA’s 50 states (plus Washington, DC) have now relaxed regulations on marijuana, allowing for either medicinal or recreational use. While the American federal government protects their closed national market by declaring marijuana to be a restricted Schedule I substance, and thus illegal to grow or possess, Americans are walking into legal marijuana dispensaries in 20 states and walking out bags full of high grade Ganja.

In short, America has seen the future, and the future is weed. Everyone else (with the notable exception of Uruguay) is living in the past. Every year that other countries delay in matching the USA’s stance, they will lose competitive ground to American herb, and cede market dominance and millions of dollars to the USA’s weed trade. The 20th Century was the era of “Big Tobacco” as a powerful and profitable industry, with US$500 billion in global annual sales and $35 billion in profit. The United States now is betting that the remainder of the 21st Century will be the era of “Big Spliff.” No other country is as advanced in the mass production, dispensation and branding of marijuana as the United States. Their scientific research on potency, growing techniques, strains and seeds is also leaps and bounds beyond anything that is being conducted anywhere else in the world. By the time the rest of the world gets around to legalizing Ganja, the United States will not be importing weed, but exporting all sorts of exotic and high-potency strains to all corners of the globe. No other country will be able to compete.

A 21st Century Banana?

Any conversation about the legalization/decriminalization/medicinal use of marijuana eventually gets around to speculation about how much money could be made if the laws were relaxed. In the United States, some economists predict that a nationwide legal marijuana trade would immediately produce a US$40 billion market, while generating an additional $15 – $20 billion in taxes (assuming you’d tax Ganja the same way you tax cigarettes). The American state of Colorado is expected to earn a solid US$98 million this year in taxes on their recreational marijuana sales.

In 2012, authorities in the Eastern Caribbean seized 19.19 metric tons of marijuana, 1,526 spliffs, 3,526,305 Ganja plants, and 25,264 cannabis seedlings. By all accounts, the majority of that Eastern Caribbean weed originated in SVG. If you apply the rough rule of thumb that authorities only seize 10-20% of the Ganja grown, you’re talking about 100 – 200 tons of Eastern Caribbean marijuana. If you accept that number, it becomes clear that SVG is exporting almost as many tons of marijuana as bananas. (We exported 180 tons of bananas in 2012).

Needless to say, a ton of weed fetches a bit more than a ton of bananas.

Reported US street prices for Marijuana vary widely and wildly, ranging from $350 – $9,000 per pound. On the other hand, a ton of bananas is currently trading at US$925. This means that a mere three pounds of low-quality weed fetches more money than 2,200lbs of high-quality bananas in the USA. Yes, gentle readers: in the USA, at today’s prices, cheap Ganja is over 800 times more valuable than good bananas.

Those per-pound prices translate to rough street value of US$770,000 of per ton for the lower-quality strains of marijuana. At that lowest (bush weed) value, the Eastern Caribbean’s Ganja exports could have an American street value of US$75–$150 million. Depending on the potency, quality and marketing cachet of VincyGreen, that street value could be exponentially higher. Of course, VincyGreen is not exported to the USA, but rather to CARICOM and the European Union (Martinique and Guadeloupe). But the numbers are instructive, nonetheless.

These figures make even the most moralistic law-maker salivate. At a time when Caribbean prime ministers and American mayors are barely paying their bills, the idea of multimillion dollar economic injections are undeniably tempting. If we accept the assertion of the US State Department that the overwhelming majority of Eastern Caribbean Ganja is Vincy-grown, then total sales of marijuana could’ve financed the construction of the Argyle International Airport – without a single loan, sale of land, or foreign grant – in under three years. Our GDP, currently hovering around EC$2 billion, could suddenly balloon 20% to $2.4 billion – taking our per capita GDP from $19,000 to $24,000, and leapfrogging the average wealth of Dominicans, Grenadians and Saint Lucians.

There’s only one small problem with these gloriously rosy projections about the impact of legalized marijuana on our economy: they’re completely fictitious.

Undoubtedly, the national production, export and taxation of any cash crop will have an economic benefit. But the truth is that we have no mechanism to estimate with any degree of accuracy just how significant that benefit will be. There are very few economic models for transitioning from an illegal crop to a legal crop, and there are a number of fundamental questions that are simply unanswerable at this point in deciding how much money legal marijuana would contribute to SVG’s bottom line.

First, the current high price of marijuana is premised on its illegality, and the risks inherent in brining it from the farm to your eager lips. Were Ganja to become globally – or even regionally – legalized, it’s safe to say that the price would fall precipitously. Let us look, for example, at a snapshot at the average or approximate prices of a few cash crops, in US dollars per metric ton:

As you can see, one of those prices is not like the others. Marijuana is 230 times more expensive than tobacco, the other “smoked leaf” on the list. That is not a sustainable price disparity, and clearly a product of the challenges involved in growing and distributing an illegal product. (To buttress this point, the price per ton of Cocaine is at least US$7millon per ton. Cocaine, of course is not a cash crop. It’s a processed product).

If the price of legal Ganja falls to tobacco-like levels, then the potential economic benefits fall dramatically. At US$750,000 per ton, the Eastern Caribbean’s US street value of our 2012 Ganja production was US$150 million. However, at $4,300 per ton, that $150 million plummets to a mere $860,000. If the per-ton price of legal Ganja falls below that of tobacco, then we might as well devote our available cash-crop land to cocoa.

Second, we must recognise that SVG has a comparative advantage in the illegal Ganja trade. Those comparative advantages do not translate to a legal export market. What makes SVG such an attractive and dominant force in illegal Ganja cultivation and trade? Let us count the ways: Mountainous interior; difficult access; far from the road network; small, independently-run and non-mechanized farms; primary export via small pirogues and go-fast boats; unregulated growth and non-existent standards; and the list goes on.

Unfortunately those are the same characteristics that would make SVG unattractive and uncompetitive as a potential market leader in legal Ganja production. They are the same factors that have made our global competitiveness in bananas such a tricky proposition. Once you factor in the American head-start in the race to produce and market lucrative strains of marijuana, the Vincentian comparative advantage all but evaporates. Historically, SVG has, at different times, embraced sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton, arrowroot and bananas as our primary cash crop. Every time, farmers have had to confront the limitations that made those Vincy-grown products uncompetitive on the regional or global market. Could Ganja be different? How? Why?

Without a clear comparative/competitive advantage, what is the long-term future of legal marijuana in SVG? No one can confidently predict at this point, but there is certainly the very real possibility that Ganja will be SVG’s modern-day banana: extremely profitable initially, before tapering off when global competitiveness increases and preferential access decreases.

For weed to follow the economic trajectory of a profitable and sustainable cash crop, then the next 10 to 15 years would be essential to establishing lucrative legal Ganja exports and market share. Marijuana would still be illegal to produce in many countries, so we wouldn’t be competing widely. We could protect the Caribbean Ganja market from competing exports in the same way that the USA has cleverly protected its local market. And we could creatively market the exotic/forbidden nature of marijuana with various forms of branding and Ganja Tourism. (Tours of local, organic, cooperative Ganja farms? VincyGreen™? VolcanoWeed™? Or maybe “MountainTop Ganja™ – Organically grown in the clouds: We grow it high, to take you higher!”)

If SVG and the wider Caribbean are not among the early adopters of legalized/decriminalized Ganja, we will be left behind in exploiting its economic potential. If we belatedly reform our laws after waiting for the rest of the world to move on this issue, then Ganja will not even be our 21st century banana, but instead our 21st century mango: Something that everyone consumes locally, but is rarely exported, and seldom purchased in retail outlets. No one in SVG is getting wealthy selling mangoes.

Who’d Get Rich?

For all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have likely been made from Vincentian marijuana, it has not made very many people wealthy. With a few notable exceptions, Vincentian Ganja farmers are still eking out a rather modest living from their illicit exploits. The vast difference between the wholesale price of Vincy weed and its retail price in Martinique, Saint Lucia and Barbados reflects the markup charged by shippers, middlemen and resellers, and often doesn’t translate to the man in the hills. Money is lost to law enforcement interdiction, dishonest middlemen, and foreign “bosses” for whom many farmers toil.

Vincentians are definitely making money from Ganja. Just not as much money as you might expect.

Let’s assume Ganja was 100% legal to grow and sell. Who would profit from that growing and selling? Certainly the Government would make some money on taxes and licenses. Surely a few farmers with large landholdings currently lying fallow or dedicated to less profitable crops would get a few dollars. But what about the existing marijuana farmers in the hills? Could they compete with legitimate cultivators? Do they own land that they could farm once they were evicted from the hillside Crown Lands that they illegally occupy? Would large foreign conglomerates enter the Vincentian market to manage the growth, export and profit of weed, as Amajaro has done for cocoa? Once freed of the constraints of illegality, would the regional competition grow and stifle our local Ganja market? After all, we grow less cocoa than Grenada and export fewer bananas than Saint Lucia. Who’s to say we’d retain our market leadership in marijuana?

In addition to taxing and regulating Ganja, the Government would obviously save money on police interdictions, court actions, hospital visits and surveillance costs associated with law enforcement. The State would probably see an increase in Ganja tourists in the same way that the Netherlands does. Maybe our pejorative label as the weed capital of the Eastern Caribbean would be lifted, which, in and of itself, would have value.

But if the primary economic value of legal Ganja would be simply to shift the majority of its earnings from local, rural farmers with limited options to the coffers of the State and already-established farmers, is it worth it? You could argue that, once legal, marijuana would be cultivated more widely, leading to a much larger pie to be divided among more people. But is that true? We have 300 – 400 acres of marijuana under illegal cultivation. We have about the same amount of land currently legally cultivated with bananas, and less than that for arrowroot and other root crops. Who’s to say that Ganja will get any bigger than it already is?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. Hopefully CARICOM will help. The recently-concluded CARICOM meeting in SVG decided to establish a Regional Commission “to address issues identified in relation to marijuana use.” Hopefully those “issues” extend beyond medical, legal and social impact studies; and also make a clear-eyed assessment of the expected economic impact of marijuana at various stages of deregulation. The Regional Commission is expected to report its findings to the CARICOM Heads of State and Government in less than four months. Maybe by then we’ll know whether marijuana is an economic panacea or a pipe (chalice?) dream.

Two days after SVG experienced its worst flooding in a century, I travelled up the leeward coast of Saint Vincent to survey the damage. The trip, for me, was more than an exercise in disaster tourism. It was an opportunity to educate myself on the scale and scope of the damage, so that I could accurately convey to bilateral and multilateral partners the nature and urgency of the assistance we needed. Also, I wanted to be able to answer a question that was gnawing at the edges of my consciousness, and one that would surely occupy the minds of those we asked to support us:

How could a mere three hours of rainfall cause so much death and destruction?

The complex answer to that question lay at the crowded intersection of meteorology, geography, topography, poverty, history, poor planning and plain bad luck. The World Bank tells us that SVG hasn’t experienced that much rain in that short a period at any point in its recorded history. The rain fell most intensely in rural communities, where historical underdevelopment and an inhospitable terrain forced people to perch houses precariously on mountainsides and in riverbeds. Our 28 damaged or destroyed bridges, and our road network, simply were not designed or engineered to accommodate the historic deluge that we experienced. Some of the deceased – like those in the tragically affected Nanton family and my own family member Raymond Gonsalves – might have survived if their homes were simply built ten or so feet to the left or right, as landslides did not devastate entire villages, so much as they seemed to target individual households within a village.

But there was another element to the damage that played a lesser, though still significant role in the tragedy. A common sight amid the twisted metal and crushed concrete of ruined infrastructure was another, more curious, presence:

Logs.

Not trees – uprooted, with twisted trunks and broken branches (though there were plenty of those too). But logs. Standard lengths, stripped of branches, and neatly cut by cutlass or chainsaw. These logs clogged swelling rivers, and acted like high-velocity battering rams as they hurtled downstream and downhill into bridges, pipelines and homes.

Where did these logs come from? Some were the product of illegal logging, where people venture into the hills to cut trees for resale to furniture builders, and their own construction needs. But far more, according to the area’s residents, came from the farmers “in the hills.”

The Ganja farmers.

Marijuana, illegal throughout the Caribbean, isn’t grown on easily accessible farmlands, for obvious reasons. SVG – which boasts a mountainous, remote, yet fertile interior – has always been an idea locale for enterprising Marijuana cultivators. As Marijuana has become a big regional business, fuelled by growing demand in nearby, more affluent islands, Ganja-growing conglomerates have been putting more and more Vincy acreage under cultivation. A few years ago, the (conservative) estimate was that over 300 of St. Vincent’s 30,000 acres of forest was being used to grow Ganja. It is undoubtedly much more than that today. This means more clearing of high-altitude farmland, more logging, and less protection for our steep slopes and downhill villages.

Add once-in-a-century rainfall to increasingly unprotected mountainsides; and the landslides aren’t hard to predict. Combine that with hundreds – if not thousands – of cut logs lying loosely on those same unprotected hillsides, and you have a recipe for disaster.

We have this image of the noble Ganja farmer in our collective consciousness, which – although it has some elements of truth – is increasingly at odds with the emerging modern reality. He is not the subsistence farmer he once was – he is growing for export. He may not be the solitary, independent, free spirit he once was – now he has employers, workers, suppliers, shippers and markets to satisfy. He is probably not the humble pacifist he once was – now he can also be a hyper-competitive, gun toting, booby-trap setting, eye-for-an-eye warrior. He is less often the devout Rastafarian he once was – he now is the producer of a cash crop, and his end user is more likely some drunken partygoer in Martinique, Barbados or Trinidad than it is a righteous consumer of a holy sacrament. Let’s face it: SVG’s Rasta community does not need 300 acres of weed to meet their local religious and medicinal purposes.

More than any of this, today’s Ganja farmer is not necessarily a caring steward of our precious natural environment. He is just as likely to be a slashing, burning, logging destroyer of centuries-old indigenous forests and other flora and fauna. An eradicator of habitat and nesting areas for our unique and endangered Saint Vincent Parrot. Not to mention being a mortal threat to the lives, livelihoods and infrastructures of his friends and family members who live in the communities beneath his wonton environmental destruction.

In the month before the floods, I raised these environmental concerns on two separate occasions with some of the members of the “informal farming sector,” and with some of their primary advocates and defenders. The response I received was a predictable refusal to squarely acknowledge the environmental impacts of their actions, and a desire to turn the conversation towards the legalization of Marijuana. If Ganja were legal, the argument goes, these farmers would come down from the hills, put away their chainsaws, and plant on the flat and fallow farmlands that were once home to our booming banana business. The forests would return, the parrots would nest, and the illegal logging would be reduced to a trickle. They told me that nobody wants to be in the mountains for months, away from family, removed from modern amenities, fighting with rival planters, and afraid of the next “Vincy-Pac”-style law enforcement action. It is the system that has driven them into the hills – a system of laws, underdevelopment, the legacy of the WTO’s antipathy to Caribbean bananas, and limited options for personal growth and development. Change the system, by legalizing Marijuana, and voila! the problems I complain about will disappear.

They may have a point. They do have a point. But it is a point that is equal parts reality and hopeful utopian conjecture. How close are we – realistically – to the full legalization of Ganja? Will decriminalization of small amounts for medicinal/home use allow for mass cultivation of Ganja in open farms below the 1,000 foot contour? Do the men in the hills actually own or have access to any of these low-lying farms? In an environment where Ganja cultivation and export is legal, what would be SVG’s competitive advantage, and what is to stop Ganja going the way of bananas as a once-lucrative cash crop that is produced more cheaply elsewhere? Who’s to say that the illegal export model will translate smoothly to the regulations, pressures and expectations of a legitimate production regime?

Also, fundamentally, we cannot ignore the fact that farmers have “squatted” on 300+ acres of forested Crown Land and converted it, with their own sweat equity, into fertile farmland. The price of that land – $0.00 per square foot – is hard to beat down on the flats. Who’s to say that anyone will simply abandon the land and cede their farms to the encroaching forest once Ganja is legal? Wouldn’t they continue to work those lands, with legal or other illegal crops, in the way in which they have become accustomed?

Many of these questions I’ll explore in more depth in parts 2 and 3 of this posting. But neither those questions, nor the overarching issue of legalization/decriminalization, get us any closer to solving our pressing environmental problems in the short term.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation has told us that the Christmas floods have denuded over 10% of our indigenous forest cover. A lot of that deforestation was exacerbated by, or directly related to, the behavior of the Ganja farmers. And a lot of those trees – whether cut or uprooted – remain on the mountainsides, waiting for the next bit of bad weather to come careening downhill towards vulnerable towns and villages. Without mentioning Ganja specifically, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves calls this deforestation problem a “ticking bomb” in Saint Vincent’s interior. This ticking is only going to get louder, and the bomb bigger, without action from all sectors of society – including the farmers themselves.

The environmental cost of continued logging and poor forest management by Ganja farmers cannot be ignored. If the farmers themselves do not play a role in mitigating the potential effect of their deforestation and farming methods, then the Government will have no choice but to act even more aggressively in controlling the illegal activities in the hills. The argument that the Ganja farmers “aren’t hurting anyone” rings hollow when a government is faced with a double-digit death toll and a reconstruction bill that is almost 20% of GDP. Was this death and devastation all the fault of Ganja farmers? Of course not. Not even close. But the contributory role played by the deforestation and logging must not be swept under the carpet, either.

What can be done today, in a sociopolitical environment where the State has obvious difficulties in formally engaging with a sector of society that is openly flouting the law? Quite a bit, actually.

First, farmers must agree to a moratorium on clearing additional forest cover for Ganja cultivation. There must be a total freeze in further deforestation. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has a pretty solid aerial view of how much forest has been cleared to date. Farmers need to be made aware that the next acre of forest removed will have severe, interdiction-style consequences. Some existing farms, based on their location, may simply have to be surrendered.

Second, forestry officials and farmers must cooperate in the identification and disposal of logs and fallen trees. We’re talking about close to 4,000 acres of inhospitable mountainside that is either denuded after the flood or under Ganja cultivation. The simple fact is that the Government does not have the human or financial resources to deal with a problem of that magnitude on its own. Cooperation – unofficial though it may be – is vital.

Third, the Government must attempt to actively court funding from environmental agencies and NGOs that have an interest in combatting deforestation. We must try to persuade the FAO, UNEP, UNDP, the UN-REDD programme, the Nature Conservancy, etc., to overcome their squeamishness in dealing with “the Marijuana issue” so that we can get real money and expertise on the ground to help manage this problem. These agencies and organisations cannot only help us financially, but their personnel can be effective interlocutors in dialogue with the farmers. Politicians and Government personnel may have the stench of Babylon’s System or be accused of spying for future raids and eradication campaigns; but an FAO official could more credibly talk about terraced farming, managing water runoff, and soil conservation.

Fourth, the Government must continue to beef up its forestry and environmental divisions, with funding, human resources, and stronger legislation. A lot has been done to date in all three areas, but the increase of logging and climate change volatility is outpacing our ability to keep up. Roughly one third of mainland Saint Vincent is forested. That forest is under threat. We must increase our commitment to this aspect of environmental stewardship.

Fifth, the nascent conversation that is just underway about the legal framework surrounding Marijuana in the Caribbean must also focus on how we will deal with the existing growers and exporters. Everyone is talking about whether the innocent teenager with a spliff should be prosecuted. But no one is talking about the supply chain that begins with a large-scale Ganja cultivator in the mountains of SVG. Ganja isn’t grown by the stalk in backyard gardens anymore. It’s grown on mini-plantations. Any emerging regulatory framework must encompass both the consumer and the producer of the product.

Sixth, as implied in every other point here, we need to talk. Not to apologise or antagonize or defend or deny, but to deal with the very real fact that an informal activity in SVG has grown to the point that it is affecting the environmental health and disaster preparedness of our country – at a time of increasingly volatile and dangerous climate change. These conversations have to begin in earnest. They can be informal, backdoor, clandestine, or whatever. If the USA can have peace talks with the Taliban, if the Syrian Government and Islamist rebels can negotiate in the midst of a war, then certainly all of us Vincentians can sit down and have a sober collective discussion about how to resolve this gathering environmental threat.

I called this posting “This is NOT a Marijuana Blog.” And it’s not. The mountainside farmers could’ve been growing tomatoes, for all I care. It’s an environmental posting. And its message is simple: